Obsessive, Compulsive, and Autie too!

I wear a necklace around my neck most of the day. The necklace is the “plain jane” variety. It’s not for decoration sake. I wear it under my shirt to discreetly hide why I wear it. Its sole purpose is to carry my spare remote car key. I wear it even though my main key is either in my purse or in my pocket. It doesn’t make sense, logically speaking, to have two identical car keys on my person, but that’s obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for you. I’m obsessed with losing my key to transportation. If I were to somehow lose my main key, I’d have a spare one on me…literally speaking.

I am compulsive with the location of my remote key. It’s a repetitive irresistible urge that is against my own “thinking” wishes. I make a mental note of placing my keys in one of the compartments in my purse. When I later go to hang up my purse, what do I do? I check to see if the keys are in the compartment. Logically speaking, I know they can’t jump out and walk off. But to get rid of the urge, I check anyway. That’s OCD for you.

When I got my first smart watch, I was so excited because electronic gadgetry is an obsessive interest. Having such interest is a common Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) trait. My gadget collection keeps growing thanks to my overattachment to its items and thus, having a hard time of letting go of the old while bringing in the new. But what I couldn’t have seen coming is that one of the smart watch applications would add another item to my OCD list.

It was the health application that counts my steps per day. The default goal was six thousand. If I stayed idle for more than an hour, I’d feel a buzz on my wrist with my watch displaying a message to get moving. And like an obedient child, I would. My ASD tendency is to obey the rules and keep up the routine which was stepping up to the default.

Since I started jogging in place, I found it to be a way to “stim”. Just like rocking in a chair or pacing the floor, it is repetitive movement. Stimming is one of a number of my ASD traits. It may sound strange, but jogging for me can be more “soothing” than tiring. Within a week after my smart watch came into my life, I was doing far more steps than 6000. At the time I am writing this, logically speaking, I don’t need to do 20,000+ steps per day, but tell my OCD that.

Woe is me! I don’t really know where my ASD ends and OCD kicks in. Since I know I have both, I don’t reckon it really matters. I guess it is kind of like having a set of fraternal twins. Double the trouble, but a double opportunity to rely on the Good Lord and keep a sense of humor about it all.